Scared to death if the water freezes or the fire goes out at night when we can't get help ...
It'll be daylight in a few hours and I'll try to get some real sleep.
Drove thru -24 a few days ago (Adirondacks).
As I've read these and noticed the spirit, I started wondering what they were saying over DU. But I refuse to go over to that DUmp. I imagine though that its full of anger and vitriol with a lot of hate and GW blaming.
Can’t imagine putting up with that kind of misery. Give me south Texas any day.
I have a little Infrared Digital Thermometer. Last night I was checking temps outside and pointed it straight up to check the sky.
It said “Lo”.
Got on the internet to find the range of the thermometer:
“-27F to +435F”
When I’ve tried this before it usually registers about 20 below current air temp.
Was -22 or something like that here in Pittsburgh back in the snowstorm of 94... the -7 or whatever we hit last night was cold, but not unprecedented. Certainly new record for the day, but still a good way from the all time low.
Great bulldada quote from the hilariously bad rip-off of Star Wars movie called Starcrash (1978), featuring the rather toothsome Caroline Munro, and the first robot with a grating and hokey southern drawl:
“You must return before the sun sets. At night the temperature drops thousands of degrees!”
It is a low-rated cult movie that is very expensive on DVD because it is so beloved. When you are snockered, it is incredibly funny.
Well at 6:00 AM our two dogs let me know that Mr. GG2 was playing possum and I had to take them out. It was 6 degrees and thats as cold as I ever need to feel. It was the fastest bathroom break those two mutts ever made. :-)
Keep a pencil lead-sized stream of cold water on at all faucets. Open all under-sink cabinets for the night. Keep a small heater with a temperature control in the cellar area on at night, set to around 50 degrees. Our propane water heater puts out enough waste heat to keep the cellar at 40 all the way down to zero. Know where your house plumbing is vulnerable and take steps to add low, consistent heat to those areas. At -25 or lower, we add ceramic heaters in front of the under-sink cabinets overnight. We have a 100-year-old house with no central heat.
Set back up gas heat to 55.
Keep 2-3 large pieces of firewood ready for overnight, plus some medium-small pieces. Actually, you get the most heat when the wood has become a mass of glowing coals. We sleep normally and check the fire maybe 2x a night when one or the other gets up to use the bathroom. If it is beyond the glowing mass of hot coals stage, open dampers, set on a few pieces of small-medium sized firewood, go do your business and then open all the faucets for a few minutes just to make sure there are no ice clogs. Return faucets to pencil-lead-sized stream, check fire, which should have flames, put on largest pieces of firewood and set dampers back to medium-to-medium low. Go back to sleep.
Remember to take the stovepipe out weekly and burn and brush out all the creosote.
Remember to turn the cellar heater off when outside temps rise to 15-20.
We routinely have bad winters with periods of 18-35 below. After 40 years we know when it is cold enough to freeze the pipes (-18 for 2 or more consecutive nights).
Since you have never seen it before, the real test and question is - Did you FEEL it - or only see it?
-22 here in Minneapolis Monday morning. Truck (parked outside) screamed and complained all the way to work, but got me there.
In the mid 1940s my family, as I do now, was living in rural Idaho. No phones, no radio announcements of cancelled school.
My older brother tells me (I was born in ‘47, and missed this) that if the thermometer was under 20 degrees below 0, Fahrenheit, the school bus did not run. Above -20 the kids made the 3/4 mile trek down Fern Creek Road to the bus stop on the main road.